


Drabbles, Snippets and Occasional Pieces

by CassieIngaben



Category: The Professionals (TV 1977)
Genre: Crack, Drabble, Drabble Collection, Gen, Humor, M/M, Snippets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-10
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:34:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25173943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CassieIngaben/pseuds/CassieIngaben
Summary: Bottom-of-the-barrel collection, for the completist. All drabbles originally published in DIAL 21 (Spring 2002) and DIAL 22 (Summer 2002)
Relationships: William Bodie/Ray Doyle
Kudos: 2





	Drabbles, Snippets and Occasional Pieces

#### The With-a-Little-Help-From-The-Hag Drabble (The Hairy Subtext Drabble)

"Who are you calling a hairy homoerotic subtext?" Doyle demanded menacingly.

Frodo paled and took a step back. "I'm awfully sorry! I mistook you for my gardener... He's really understated, you know, and he's got these really cute hairy feet..." At the expression on Doyle's face Frodo paled some more and run away, slamming his green door behind him. 

Bodie frowned and then shrugged. "Doyle-me-lad, you have the weirdest grasses. Shorty there must've been nuts."

Doyle shook his head. "I never saw him before. I think we took a wrong turn down the road. Oh well -- let's go, Bodie."

#### The I-Liked-It-But-Please-Explain-Me Drabble

Bodie squinted: “Did you understand that last Drabble?”

“Nope. But then we are fictional characters who don’t watch TV. No idea what this Father Ted thing is.”

“It was hilarious though…”

“Only because it wasn’t you getting married!”

Bodie sneered. “No way, sunshine. It’s canonical – I am not the marrying type.” 

Doyle sighed. Canon was much worse than fanfiction. Might as well admit it. “OK it was very funny. You happy now?”

“Good boy!” Bodie beamed.

Never the type to give in graciously, Doyle added evilly: “One day Cassie will write a story about one of us getting married…”

“EEK!!!”

#### Just Before The Flying Mutant Killer Gerbils Destroyed London and Squashed The Prime Minister Drabble

Bodie looked over Doyle’s shoulders, pouting gloomily in the green glare of the computer screen: "Bloody fanwriter’s insane. Certifiable."

"Actually, the computer says she is already certified. I knew it!" 

"So, is there a way to get rid of her, you think? Get the Men in White to take her away?"

"I have a better idea. Look at this file here, under 'Dangerous, Classified Scientific Experiments Likely to Go Badly Awry' "

"Where?"

"Just before 'Making Robocops Out of Not-Quite-Dead Agents'... See?"

"Ah! 'Flying Mutant Killer Gerbils'. Uhm…. Sure it'll work?"

"Trust me, Bodie. What can go wrong after all?"

#### The Cognitive Dissonance Drabble (X-Files and Facelift Crossover)

"Oh, Scully..." crooned Zax softly.

"Hands off my partner!" screamed Mulder.

Zax huffed: "Look, that's *my* Scully, not yours. Mine has short black hair. Yours, yours long auburn hair." Then he flicked his hands in the air, adjusting the angle of Mulder’s wrists: "And will you handle that gun properly?" 

“I don’t trust you! You’re a magician, and can do tricks to hair!” wailed Mulder, and threw his gun on the ground.

Zax briefly closed his eyes: “Look. Mine, boy. Yours, girl. Happy now?” 

Mulder opened and closed his mouth: “I’d never noticed… Oh my God!” and he run away.

#### Elves and Rabbits Double Drabble

Bodie examined critically the long floppy ears that adorned his head, and twitched his nose: "I don't like this, Doyle. For one, those bloody ears keep falling over my eyes; and I used to HATE carrots..."

Doyle sighed, and kept trying to smooth some of his suddenly long curls over his monstrous ears. "You prefer being a bottom Bodie, and she did say elves/rabbits... Of course you're welcome to being the elf--I've had more than enough of it, believe me!"

Bodie crunched another carrot, and tried--unsuccessfully—to shrug. What was the difference anyway: big ugly ears or bigger uglier ears, that was all the change that Doyle had to go through. Try being hairy all over, jumping instead of walking, eating bloody vegetables only, and--his pink eyes suddenly lit up, and he poked Doyle with his half-chewed carrot. Doyle made a disgusted face, and tried to move away from the dangerous swing of a 6-foot, vegetable-wielding rodent, and one that was now excitedly babbling:

"Doyle! Doyle!!! If I am a rabbit, it means I have the drive and stamina of one? I mean, in bed?"

Doyle paled, and covered his (elfin of course) eyes: he was doomed!

#### The Pros-The Sloth Crossover Drabble

“DOYLE! COME, RUN!!!”

“WHAT?!?” Ray shouted back, running up to Bodie, gun drawn.

“He moved his foot! I’m sure I saw it”

Doyle put his gun away and swore: “Damn, I missed it!” then he turned around suspiciously: “How do I know that he really moved? He always moves when it’s YOUR turn to watch…”

Bodie gloated: “Just natural superiority, sunshine. Come on, don’t be sad: maybe he’ll scratch again when it’s your turn.”

Doyle snorted: “Umphf! Maybe he’s dead but doesn’t rot because it’s winter. I hate it when it’s our turn to keep an eye on The Sloth.”

#### The No More Drabbles Drabble

"No more drabbles?"

Bodie mimed a faint. "I am heartbroken!"

Doyle jumped up and let out a whooping scream of joy. "Free at last!"

“Actually, the worst is still to come. Our serial numbers are gonna be filed.”

“WHAT?”

“Yes. They write their godawful fanfictions, then they give us dumb names like Baddad” – do I sound American, or stupid, or both? – “and then they make money off us.”

“Money? Where?”

“Calm down, Doyle. They make money, not us.”

“Do you think we can blackmail them? You share the bread or we call Brian Clements and he breaks your kneecaps?”

“DOYLE!” 

#### Bodie and the Fellowship Snippet

Bodie took out his gun and sprayed the orcs with a hail of bullets: in a few minutes, the path was clear. Then he grabbed Frodo with one hand and the ladder to the helicopter Doyle was piloting with the other. "Let's go and have it done with this nonsense, Doyle! Fly us and Shortie to the bloody volcano!!!"

#### Posthumous Slash Snippet

Bodie's tombstone looked lovingly at Doyle's tombstone. Doyle's tombstone looked back, and tried to move towards his beloved marble-mate. Then he realised that as a tombstone he couldn't really move at all; he cursed fluently while Bodie's tombstone sighed in frustration. The author thought, "well it was a good idea but I think this time the execution didn't go all that well...".

#### Surbiton Snippet (The Good Life Crossover)

It looked like an ordinary day in Surbiton. The Good's backyard was at its usual shambolic worst, with Geraldine the goat wandering off to do its Attila on the neighbouring's patches, the leeks not coming out properly, and the pear tree still not showing any signs of producing anything edible. Yet something was unusually sad with one of the animals.

Bodie looked, and was, sad and dejected. Not only it was ten days to the full moon, when his were-horsiness would kick in and make him a much bigger, hairier and hornier horse--he was also very very hungry, yet there was nothing for him to eat. Well, if one excepted the glass-leafed, slightly-pink-tinged delicate Doyleflower growing so temptingly close to his hooves. Bodie turned round making equine eyes to the frail flower; he sighed, then his belly rumbled noisily.

The Doyleflower looked up at the were-horse, and snarled: "Fuck, Bodie, will you stop mooning over me? And quit dribbling, will'ya? Your drool makes me leaves wilt! If you had any brains left in your hayloft, you'd remember this is a gen story, so you simply can NOT eat me. Get over it, sunshine!"

_4 Nov 2002 - This short vignette was prompted by a discussion with a fellow fan, who said she couldn't not see slash in Pros, so she didn't care for gen stories, the same way she didn't care for Bodie as a were-horse or Doyle as a frail flower._

#### It's Hard to be a Bard (The Pen is Mightier than the Word)

Bodie tried to relax and enjoy the evening, to no avail. He mentally went through possible causes. It was not that Raven was scantily clad in his elf chieftain costume, which tended to enticingly frame the most interesting bits of skin: after all, he'd seen them, nay he'd tasted them -- repeatedly -- and never got this sense of unease, this squirming wrongness nagging at him. Rather the opposite, actually.

After due reflection, Bodie decided it wasn't the rows upon rows of haughty elves, most of them related to Raven and thus probably considering him, Bodie, a lowly catamite to ogle with murderous intent. He was used to dysfunctional family dynamics, and it'd never bothered him before.

It was not the elvish food, either: it had taken time, but now he had mostly trained his wayward stomach not to reject the chicoree and hemlock pie, if he gave it due warning. And moreover, he didn't eat any of the damned stuff tonight: he'd even given a wide berth to the courgette and carob schnaps, for the goddess' sake!

Bodie briefly considered whether it could be their seats, and decided his leather and caoutchouc leggings were doing their job against the prickly woolen cushions and wraps scattered over their seats. As to the flashing, coloured burst of lights shooting out from the braziers every time the elf servants threw their blasted mineral dusts on the flames; he'd grown used to them ages ago, and in any case the scare had been violent to rise and quick to dissipate, nothing like this gnawing, deep-seated sense of unease and disquiet.

Finally, almost as blindingly as the burst of pink and orangish light from the brazier to his left, he had it. Of course! That was it. The bard. The bleeding, confounded bard. His story had no thrust, it just wavered uncertainly, hesitatingly, as if the storyteller had never bothered to balance it and consider it as a whole. And the delivery! The harp was ever so slightly out of tune, and the hapless bard was ever uhm-ming and ahw-ing, and if Bodie heard another "well" or "you see" he would behead the elf, no matter that half his kin was in the audience. They'd probably applaud him anyway.

As if on cue, the bard stuttered once more, and halted completely, as if he'd forgotten his lines altogether. Bodie reached for his sword, but he could not compete with elven speed -- Raven was no more than blur to his right, and the next thing Bodie saw was the bard's head rolling on the floor and stopping at his feet, gormless expression still firmly in place. Bodie looked up and smiled at the blazing eyes of his elf lover. They smiled at each other, their private smile, and Bodie silently mouthed "thank you". Then the whole hall, which until then had hovered on the edge of a stunned silence, burst into spontaneous applause.

Raven raised his hands, acknowledging the crowd, and then he gestured for silence, and spoke: "My kin! My apologies for providing inadequate entertainment! To make my excuses, let there be a wine-guzzling contest, and may the hardest stomach win!"

As the hall exploded in clamour, Raven turned to Bodie again, smirking lewdly. "Well, the bard has stopped upsetting you, my sweet darling little human: how about I make more exhaustive amends for his unfortunate performance, in private?"

Bodie stood up beaming. "Let's go!"

_This work comes from a 2005 mailing list discussion where we wondered whether, in a bardic culture, fanfiction would be told via the spoken word. And there must have been good bards and bad bards. Enters_ The Hunting.

#### Wheeee

"WHEEEEEE!!!"

Bodie looked up from his customary Thursday evening gun-cleaning: "You OK, Doyle?"

"Course I am, why?" said Doyle, while tap-dancing on the coffee table.

Bodie peered into the barrel of his disassembled gun: "Uhm, the girlie scream. You haven't screamed like a girl since you stopped seeing Mulder after he was kidnapped by aliens. And I really shouldn't mention the tap-dancing..."

Doyle stepped indignantly off the coffee table, and stood, crossing his arms: "It's Irish dancing, you uncultured lout! And it was a scream of joy!"

Bodie looked up again, a gleam of hope in his eyes: "Cowley's got the flu and we can have a day off?"

"Better..."

"You don't say... a payrise?"

"Better!"

"God decided to exterminate all slashfans?"

Doyle said: "Almost there! Have you seen the theme for their stupid monthly scribbling thing?" 

Bodie paled and made a face: "Can't bring myself to, after the last ones. What is it now?"

"Guess."

"I get to kill you because you string me along making me guess instead of just bloody telling me."

"Nope."

"Pity."

"Aw, come on Bodie be a--"

Bodie sighed, and advanced menacingly towards Doyle, hands in their 'blunt, strong instrument of death' pose.

"OK OK, I'll tell you! Can't even have a little guessing... "

"This is NOT 'Twenty Questions,' Doyle!!! TELL ME NOW!!!"

Doyle said very quickly: "We'renottogether!"

Bodie blinked. "Uh? Not together? Us?"

"YES!" 

"And what's the good thing about this?" asked Bodie in his 'dangerously calm' voice.

"We don't have to do anything! We can just stay here and read a book or go fishing or -- for once -- do some work, you know, plot and action... No slash! No mad, tiring and embarrassingly inaccurate sex!" 

Bodie made a sort of a mirthless laugh, the one he usually reserved for the stories where he had to play the chilling, slightly deranged thug. "You ARE naive, Doyle."

"I'm not."

"You are too."

"I'm not."

"You are too."

"I'm not."

"You are too."

Their brilliant dialogue (hey, even Homer can have a day off, OK?) was interrupted by a knock at the door. Bodie threw up his arms and went to answer it. He opened the door a wee crack, then turned and smiled wolfishly at Doyle. "For you, sunshine!" he announced gleefully, and then stepped sideways to let a group of fans carrying a tied up, gagged and blindfolded Cowley. The women were wearing pink t-shirts emblazoned with a large purple caption "Slashfans for equal representation of C/D stories." 

_This work was written in 2002 as part of an online writing challenge (this one was, Bodie and Doyle are not together)_

#### The Hunger

Doyle raked a hand through disorderly but still beautiful long curls. Then he looked at his menageriesque companions and swore: "Damn, damn, damn! How am I supposed to cross the river now? I already hated it in elfschool when the elfteacher gave us the wolf sheep and cabbage puzzle to do..." 

He counted off his fingers: "Now, if I put Bodie with the otter, he'll eat the poor thing. If I put him with the wizard, ditto, and the unicorn too..." 

Doyle blinked and shook his head: "Actually, Bodie will eat *anything* I put him with! Right, let's try again: can't put the wizard and the otter together because the otter is his taboo animal and would sap the living strength and magic off him... Can't put the wizard and the unicorn together because that would leave Bodie and the otter on the shore..." 

Doyle sank to the ground, holding his head with his beautifully manicured hands, and groaning weakly.

In the meantime, stealthy in his wolf shape, Bodie jumped the unicorn and quickly had his second breakfast with it. The wizard was asleep -- doting old geezer was napping half the time -- and couldn't alert Doyle, and the otter was beautifully decorative but too stupid to do anything. So Doyle only realised what had happened when he noticed Bodie cleaning his teeth with Ilya's Horn; the elf went in a rage and shook the wolf-man until he burped back a flurry of fine blond-white hair.

"You idiot! You ate the unicorn! And I could never even get close to it!!!!" 

Then Doyle gave a sort of bitter, twisted smile: "and it's not even gonna help me with my problem. If you had eaten the otter I could have put the wizard and the unicorn in the boat, and then taken you with my second trip!!!"

Distracted in his dismay, Doyle gave his back to Bodie, which just then decided that not only he didn't like being shaken, but that he was still a tad hungry: before the elf could scream 'woaidfhgirfgpmegpoerjperjqrnjroitoejq' Bodie had eaten him. 

On hearing Doyle's desperate cry for help in the beautiful elf language, the wizard woke up. He soon realised the situation, and in a fit of panic he scrambled for help, any help, and he ended up grabbing the otter by its tail. With a terrible earth-rending scream, the wizard and its taboo animal vaporised each other: only a little heap of multicoloured ashes was left. Bodie lapped at the ashes experimentally, then made a face and retreated, sighing regretfully. He looked around him, daintily cleaned a paw with his tongue. At that very moment the full moon sunk westward into the beautiful horizon, and Bodie took his human form again. He stood up, and looked around at the gory mess he had made of the camp, and of their Mission to save the world and civilisation as they knew it. 

He sighed: "dammit, stupid Doyle forgot to muzzle me again. Never trust an elf to have half a brain. Oh well, too bad for the Mission. I guess I'll have to join the Forces of Evil now, if I want to have lunch." He hopped on the boat and started to row downstream towards the enemy camp, pausing now and then to munch on a dried Swiss roll from his ration pack.

_19 March 2002-Prompted by a discussion with a fellow fan who suggested writing a story with Bodie as wolf, Doyle as his guide and a river otter, all setting off to see a wizard and care for the IllyaUnicorn...._


End file.
